Ask HN: Who is your go-to web hosting company? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who is your go-to web hosting company?

22 pointspft44 comments

I'm looking for Web hosting (either shared or VPS) for a personal owncloud setup. All the reviews I've seen online say different things or are obviously sponsored by a particular company so don't give a proper representation of the quality of the services.

Any thoughts or recommendations? What d'yall think of godaddy, hostgator and bluehost compared to AWS for value for money?

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For shared, I've never used a service that could measure itself with NearlyFreeSpeech. Of course, I don't host anything huge or very important, but I suspect that even if I did I would still go with NFS. Their pay-for-what-you-use pricing, realm options, and support (for an extra but fair fee) are simply phenomenal. I have nothing at all to complain about with NFS, whereas I hold plenty of grudges against godaddy and hostgator.

The best shared/pseudo-vps hosting that EXISTS in the world is: https://www.webfaction.com/?aid=9281 (referral link)

Source: Have hosted from php/mysql stuff to 350+ requests/second uwsgi-python-flask-postgresql webapp on a 10$/month shared-space.

I challenge every commenter on this thread to find a better host than webfaction!!

+1 Never have any problems with them and their customer service is great

does it come with cpanel license?

they have their own custom panel (better)

Their docs are amazing as well. Very detailed, step-by-step instructions.

I've been using Linode for about 18 months, never had any problems. There's been two hardware upgrades during that time. I'm on the $20/month plan.. I use it to host several domains. I've also used AWS EC2 but found it was probably overkill for my own personal needs, as I don't have the need to spin up and down instances or scale or anything like that.

i would have to say dont use linode - two companies were hacked in the last 2 years and the intruders got in by rooting all of [one section? of] linodes datacenter.... all in all i would say if they didnt learn their lesson the first time its not advisable to use them. probably better off with hetzner but idk. there should definitely be a breach tracker site.

I just use DigitalOcean and don't think about it much anymore. They're reliable, flexible and cheap.

Also, at the risk of triggering your "sponsored by a company" radar, here's my promo code, which will get you $10 off:

https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=9fad2cc71fbc

And if you are a student you can get 100$ credit from the Github student pack.

https://education.github.com/pack

I've used DigitalOcean for about a year and been happy with it. Lately I've been looking at Atlantic.Net and Vultr.com as well because they offer either cheaper or have slightly different priorities in their pricing levels.

For example, Vultr offers more memory and less hard drive space in their $5/month level.

These days I'm trying to get to a point where I have deployment software in place that would allow me to use Ubuntu LTS anywhere in a fairly short period of time. It's not that I'm actively looking to leave DigitalOcean, it's that I would like to be able to recommend something like Atlantic.Net's GO plan to somebody to put up a quick static site for $12 a year and know that it actually works because I've tried it myself.

I don't run owncloud, but if I did, I would want it to be, you know, my own cloud!

I have an intel NUC [1] in my house, in the DMZ of my router, and running a script to change it's ip address at my DNS provider when my house ip address changes

I've got a lot of stuff running on that, which can be accessed by me from anywhere, but it lives in my house, and so enjoys more legal protections and physical security than a VPS.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Next-Computing-Black-BOXDCCP847D...

I've had a "reseller" account with httpme.com for at least 10 years. Signed up with them back when the original owner was very active on WebHostingTalk (if I remember correctly, user "Aussie Bob"). Prior to them I bounced around at least 5 different shared providers and had my own servers colocated for a while. I've had minor problems that were all quickly resolved (one of my friend's sites I was hosting had a script that began to eat up too many resources, and they killed it).

The interface is standard WHM/cPanel. No SSH.

He runs AussieHost.com now.

Well if you don't trust the big review sites you at least recognize bullshit when you see it. That said, my startup is trying to give an actual unbiased look at what people think about web hosting companies. It works by aggregating and analyzing twitter sentiment about all those brands you mentioned (it only works on bigger guys who get enough volume of discussion). Take a look http://www.reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare

HostGator/BlueHost is a near identical product from the same company (EIG) and the quality is quite low. GoDaddy doesn't have that much better of a reputation but it's really hard to tell sometimes between quality of their service and people who don't like them because of what they've done in the past (sopa, elephant killing, advertising, etc). Doesn't help that they are huge either.

AWS is expensive if you're comparing it to shared hosting. They are nowhere near the same product. AWS is great if you need AWS features and are a technical person who can handle all that (or afford paying a lot for support/someone who can). The other companies are providing management/support. If you goal is installing owncloud my first question would be are you going to install/manage it or not? That generally cuts down which companies might make sense.

I plan on installing owncloud myself

I was sick of mainstream companies after endless problems and issues and I found vultr on a web hosting forum: http://www.vultr.com

And it's awesome. A good hosting provider is one you forget about. When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. So far, I didn't have any problems, didn't need any support and nothing went wrong. And the reviews, when you finally find them, are usually great.

I remember comparing performance when I made the decision. And basically, all the major players suck big time. GoDaddy, HostGator and BlueHost are shit. AWS works for large scale stuff, for everything else it's shit. If you want quality, go with a small provider. The mom and pop shops of the tech world.

Bigger companies use cost reduction to increase profits and squeeze out every last penny. Small companies and startups are hungry for clients so they focus on great services and products.

Even though it's obvious, it's considered good etiquette to disclose when you're using a referral link.

Also, you're on a new account. There's also another reply vouching for Vultr on a new account in this thread, albeit without a referral link.

Something smells.

If I were OP I wouldn't even consider vultr.

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9118593

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9118652

Yes, you got me. I created my account 10 days ago and commented on various threads just to post a referral link to a web hosting provider.

Read the TOS before you use it. You could be sued trillions of dollars for sending (accidentally or intentionally) spam over SMTP.

It's a generic Indemnification clause. Digital Ocean has it. Linode has it. AWS has it. Even my startup has it.

DigitalOcean is awesome for both side projects and complex ones, let us not forget OpenShift (redhat), heroku (it is free :D) and linode that has support for Tor. But DO is awesome for starters. For registrar I suggest NameCheap, I have used Godaddy and I am sad I did. AWS is beautifully awesome for high scalable projects.

I've had good experiences with HostGator since moving there from a smaller company that basically stopped responding to support requests. They seem to update software regularly, and it's cost effective.

I've heard bad things about GoDaddy from various sources, and that's why I opted not to go with them. Not that I'm putting up any content that is infringing or even remotely in a grey area, but I've heard their policy as a company is to take down your site at the smallest complaint and then they only look into the complaint after you ask why your site is down.

All that said, I'm still on the lookout for a hosting stack (hosting provider, OS, and application) that allows me to rapidly prototype new ideas (Drupal looks awful without a lot of customization and I'm not clued up enough for Docker).

There's no reason to deal with shared hosting providers anymore. VPSes are so incredibly cheap that it doesn't make any sense.

In order of price (low to high): DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS.

Take your pick. They're all good.

I use DO and not Linode but would like to note that Linode is more expensive only if you use DO's $5 option. Starting from the $10/month option, they are very similar in pricing with Linode being cheaper in some respects.

But then I'd have to manage and maintain a server. What if I don't want to be a server administrator?

It's not that time consuming. Digital Ocean will set up LAMP for you (or even install Drupal or Wordpress if that's your thing). Secure SSH, set up your app, set up monitoring and leave it alone.

I want to move from shared hosting. Looking at DO. Have scores of sites to migrate. I use NameCheap for domain reg and point to host. Can I host multiple domains at DO? How does it work for multiple sites?

Would setup be something like:

1. Get DO account 2. Install LAMP 3. Setup multiple sub domains in DO? 4. Create site directories in DO and copy site files into them? 5. Point domains to sub domains?

I get my domains through DreamHost. Their "unlimited" hosting is not, and it's spotty, but if you register domains through them they give free domain-registry privacy proxying. I have bit of a hangup about my personal info being freely available through lookup.

I'm up for re-evaluating my hosting soon, but right now I'm through Lithium Hosting. Haven't done much app-related stuff, but they've been fine for regular low-volume hosting stuff, and I pay $10/month (legacy plan). Web-faction sounds nice.

If all you are concerned with is cost go with something like digitalocean. If you intend to run your business on it I recommend aws.

Quite a few of my sites are hosted with EUKHost, in terms of support they've always been near perfect and I've never had to wait for help. Servers are reliable too, can't think of any major downtime in the last 5 or so years.

Tried AWS and preferred Digital Ocean instead, the $5 servers are quick and it's easy to spin one up to use for various needs.

I use Linode, Rackspace and AWS pretty heavily. Overall I recommend Linode the highest. Good prices, decent server-monitoring built in, and I love how much bandwidth they give you for each server.

AWS kills me on the bandwidth charges. The cost-calculators are practically worthless unless you're really good at estimating your potential bandwidth usage.

In my experience with OwnCloud it is a rather expensive thing to run. Running it on a $10 VPS regardless of the host, you're likely going to have a bad time.

With DigitalOcean, the SSD will definitely help, but I'd look at the $20 plan just for the RAM. However expect to have to tweak OwnCloud's environment a little to get the best out of it.

Disclaimer: I work for Rackspace.

We have a once click Orchestration install of OwnCloud that will install and fine tune your server according to their best practices and specifications,. We also have a developer+ program where you can get $50/mo for 12 months in credit to try us out (developer.rackspace.com/signup)

I use DigitalOcean. I know people have had issues with them but so far its been nothing but a good experience. I also prefer being close the metal as far as a server goes so it fit my needs perfectly.

I like DigitalOcean for my hosting, and NameCheap as a registrar. DigitalOcean has a ton of tutorials and other good resources to learn how to use its platform, and NameCheap is, well, cheap.

I've used RamNode and had a great experience using them.

Same here.

Check www.vultr.com it's cheep and you can spin your own ISO for OS install. Best I found so far.

ITT: Op asks for honest opinions about webhosts because other sites just give me a bunch of referral links.

Gets a bunch of referral links.

But thanks for those who've offered good advice, I think I might go for digitalocean.

I think I explained my choice ?

Just try it, you have 60days money back guarantee. But it's not a complete vps.

DigitalOcean

Hetzner, since a long time.

linode (a VPS web hosting provider).

N.B: I do not trust any shared hosting company.

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